


Things That Squeak and Skitter

by helshotashades



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (there is no fluff here really), Angst, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Fluff, I should probably tag for some really gross stuff, M/M, Monster!Zuko, Raw - Freeform, ah yes the birds and the ventriloquism, all you have to do is bribe me, amnesia (kinda), and rats, as stated previously, i am open to the idea of making this a monsterfucker story, i pronounce you, is is cannibalism if you eat a rat and then get turned into one?, is it cannibalism if you're no longer human?, like eating humans, realistic Azula banishment, who knows!, with dopamine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27051016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helshotashades/pseuds/helshotashades
Summary: There are things that squeak and skitter in the darkness.He’d been afraid of them, once.
Relationships: Azula/Yue, Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), hints of, i am amenable to comment bribes, one-sided (this tag is negotiable)
Comments: 57
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I am alive! Unfortunately, I also have been hit with a very bad case of plot bunny. I still have every intention of finishing my other WIP, but this idea came to me and beat me over the head mercilessly. I think I tagged for most things people would find off-putting, but I dunno. Anyways, this fic starts off really dark, and basically there's no way to go but up.

There are things that squeak and skitter in the darkness. 

He’d been afraid of them, once. 

It had been a lifetime ago, when he was still alive. 

He remembers the first one, caught in desperation, when his throat had swelled with thirst and the darkness became all-consuming. He remembers biting through fur and flesh, the snap of bone, the sweet, sweet taste of lifeblood. 

He doesn’t remember the last. 

If anyone were to look in the miserable, windowless, concrete cell that was supposedly the final resting place of Prince Zuko, they wouldn’t find anything. Perhaps he could have escaped, but the door is still latched and only a rat could have gotten through the holes in the walls. Eventually, they’d probably come to the conclusion that he’d been eaten by rats. 

Nobody would, of course, because the palace had been destroyed by a horrible monster only a few months after his unfortunate imprisonment. The best description anyone could possibly find of the thing was in a court chronicler’s records that gathered dust in the restricted section of one Capital City Library. Nobody had ever read it, but everyone knew somebody who had. The famous document went as follows. 

_On Princess Azula’s ninth birthday, there appeared a monstrous beast in the castle. I estimate it to be eleven feet tall. It is possessed of a peculiar appearance, its head, arms, legs, and tail all without flesh or skin, only bone. Its torso is covered with thick gray fur, impenetrable to any weapons known to the Fire Nation._

_Nobody has heard of a creature quite like this one, but we suspect that it is a spirit in nature, given its ability to pass through wall and flame unharmed. Its skull, tail, and fur bear resemblance to a rat, but its legs and arms are humanoid. It eats the flesh of the righteous, and drains the blood of the weak-hearted. When it first attacked, a thousand men were drained of blood, and a thousand more were swallowed whole._

It is this last achievement that becomes the name for this monster amongst the people, the Thousand Monster.

People repeat it in hushed tones, “Eat your vegetables, obey your superiors, do not question the Fire Lord, or the Thousand Monster will come.” 

Children rhyme, “The thousand monster’s come to call, run one, run all, big and small!” on playgrounds. 

He doesn’t actually remember much after ransacking the first palace, but he remembers following the Fire Lord’s from place to place. He remembers the heady mix of power lust, ruthlessness, depravity, and fire in the man’s blood. He’d kept him alive, draining his blood slowly, nibbling away at his flesh, bit by bit, savoring the taste of true evil. 

He remembers haunting the Princess, taunting her with his reflection. He’d never taken bites out of her, but he’d lapped at the blood from her wounds on the rare occasion she got them. She wasn’t nearly as good as the Fire Lord, the rotting taste of Agni’s reluctant blessing ruining the more delicate flavors of ruthlessness. Besides, her bright blue flames actually stung. 

He’d been tricked onto the ship, following the Fire Lord, and then his vision had been flames as the ship split down the middle and the Fire Lord escaped. The water parted under his feet, and so he drifted, haunting the empty ship, surviving off of fish. 

One day, there had been the unmistakable thunk of land, and he’d crawled off the miserable hunk of metal to explore this frozen wasteland he’d landed on. He’d found a massive, warm cave, full of hot springs that steamed up the air and froze into icicles on the ceiling. There was a tiny village nearby, but they didn’t smell of lifeblood, of that delicious taste that made his taste-buds sing with joy.

The first winter was bitter, and there were no fish or seals to be found anywhere. The hunger in his belly had reared its ugly head, screaming for blood and flesh. Reluctantly, he’d marched to the village to see if perhaps he could find one who was steeped enough in sin to be edible. 

They’d attacked him, though, and while their spears had bounced off of him, the water did not. 

It cut through his hide, and pain had flared in him. He’d roared and knocked ten wolf-headed warriors down with a single swipe of sharp bone. The others had fallen back to regroup, and he’d lapped at the blood of the men he’d fallen. They screamed and wriggled away, but he’d sated his curiosity. They tasted like death, an abhorrent combination of duty and honor and kindness, without even the slight tang of bender blood. 

It wasn’t worth it, he’d thought, and slinked off to find something else on this blasted rock. And then, as spring approached and the ice over the sea began to melt, the ships had come. One had landed, sure enough, and he’d run towards them, tearing apart the ship, first. 

Some of them tasted of kindness, but most of them did not. All of their blood hummed with bending though, and he drank himself silly. Some of them were even worth eating, marinated in greed and hatred, and he filled himself with their tender flesh. 

They came again and again and again through the rest of that hard, cold winter, and he and the villagers had survived the spring together in that way, the monster feasting on the enemies of the villagers, and the villagers escaping slaughter. 

The villagers fear him greatly, though, and they build a wall of ice to keep him out. One day, he comes back from a hunt to find one in his cave, water swirling around delicate fingers. He shrinks down into his rat form and hides in the highest corner of the cave, nibbling on the dead bird he finds in the nest there. He stays in the nest through the spring, keeping the eggs warm, for some reason. He grows a set of antlers that he doesn’t quite know what to do with. 

It is with surprise, then, that he wakes from a deep slumber to a tight grip around his neck. A face looks down on him, smiling. It’s a very pretty face, with smooth, unblemished, coppery skin and well-formed features. Vaguely, he recognizes that it is a boy’s face, but he can’t find it in himself to care. 

“Meat.”, the boy says, almost reverently, and the hand presses down on his windpipe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was going to wait until i finished another chapter in the making. Unfortunately, I am addicted to dopamine, and since all you lovelies have expressed so much support, I have decided to do the irresponsible thing and post another chapter.

There is only a split second of fear before the monster explodes out, bigger and bigger until his limbs split through the rat-flesh he’s wearing, and he roars indignantly at the boy.

The boy screams, now clutching bony vertebrae for dear life, legs dangling in the air, high enough up that a fall might break a bone. He doesn’t know how he knows that, because as far as either body is concerned, a seven-foot drop is nothing.

He nicks the boy’s thigh, not caring to think too hard about why, and brings the bloody talon to his face, over the boy’s flailing. It is, as suspected, disgusting. It’s a shame, because misogyny is such a rare flavor in his usual prey, and if it had only tasted of duty he probably would have eaten the boy anyways for the experience. Duty is like a semi-offensive blandness, but kindness is an overpowering bitter taste, and he decides not to.

He glances down at the boy, and thinks. Thinking is a luxury of being kept well fed, and he revels in it. A fall would be fair turnabout for trying to eat him, but that would also leave his cave splattered with blood, which would be a neon yellow sign screaming ‘the monster lives here!’. And besides, he thinks, it’s not as if he’s never not eaten anything before.

He decides to lift it down. He slides his arm underneath its backside to make sure it doesn’t fall off, and then gently lowers it to the ground.

The boy looks up at him, probably shocked still. But he snarls menacingly and snaps his teeth in an obvious threat, and the boy startles into an explosive sprint.

In the summer, though, a familiar face barges into his cave with a bright smile and a seal carcass, catching him unawares. He’s busy fussing with the once-eggs that he should have eaten when he could but had now hatched and now noisily demand food. He doesn’t know what to do with them. Other than feed them ground-up bits of seal and fish, and he is too glad that they settle to question how he gained that knowledge.

“Hi,” the boy shouts, waving, “Sorry about trying to kill you. Uh, thanks for not killing me, I guess? Anyways, this totally counts as a favor, right? So now you can’t go and make me, like, feed you my village.”

He has his own stores of meat, thank you very much, and so he pushes the seal away. The boy just turns to him quizzically.

He tries a variety of hand motions, but they fail to have any impact. He sits down, and wonders if he can't just say it. He’s never tried.

Though, lipless as he is, it ends up coming out more like ‘I hathe ny own.’, and it takes a couple tries before the boy can understand him.

The boy perks up immediately, though, and says, “You can talk?”

“Nayde?”, he tries.

“It’s a yes or no question.”, comes the reply, and he thinks about it for a moment.

He finally settles on “Yes.”

“I have so many questions.”, the boy says, eyes wide in awe.

“Uwhat’s in it hwor ne?”, he retorts, still annoyed at the boy. The boy quirks an eyebrow, obviously confused, and he tries to rephrase. “Uwhy should I answer your questions?”

The boy shrugs, and pushes the seal towards him. “It’s always good to have a little bit extra.”, it says. The chicks choose that instant to start crying for food, and he glares at the boy before proceeding to bite off the seal’s head in his mouth and chew, grinding the bones to powder, making loud cracking noises as he does. It is as much intimidation as he is feeling up to for now. He feeds the mush to the baby birds, who twitter happily and settle down for a bit.

“Hithe questions,” he says, at last, flashing five fingers to make his meaning clear.

The boy frowns. “That seal is worth at least ten questions.”

He growls. “Sehen, then.”, he allows, raising two more fingers. The boy seems agreeable to this course of action, and nods.

“My name is Sokka. What’s your name?”, Sokka asks, and he shrugs.

“I don’t know.”, he replies.

“You don’t have a name?”, Sokka asks, incredulous.

He snarls, offended, somehow. “I do. I just don’t renender it.”

“Huh?”, Sokka asks, cocking his head.

“I don’t recall it.”

“Oh.”, Sokka says. “Okay, then, I’m gonna call you.... Rat Guy!”

He shakes his head emphatically, and snaps menacingly at Sokka.

“Fine, fine,” Sokka says, putting his hands in the air, “how about Dakota?”

He screws up his (non-existent) face at the sound, but doesn’t protest, and Sokka takes that as a yes.

“So, Dakota, how old are you?”, Sokka asks, and the newly-christened Dakota doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t remember how old he is, not really, but he knows he’s been in this body for mere months, though it seems much longer.

“Older than you.”, he says, because it just seems right, and then a raucous series of screeches fills the air.

Sokka winces, as Dakota goes to feed the baby birds again, doling out bits of bloody mush to the fledglings. “That’s hithe, hy the way.”, Dakota says, holding up five fingers again.

Sokka pauses slightly, thinking for a moment before asking his sixth question.

“What kind of stuff did the person who taught you how to talk do?”

He is mildly impressed by Sokka’s question. It’s a smart question, requiring three answers in one. He thinks back to that fuzzy time in his memories, before blood and revenge had become his life. His mother and father had taught him to talk, he thinks. Maybe.

“They sent ne to die.”, he says. He can see the pity in Sokka’s face as he opens his mouth to say something, but he obviously thinks better of it and adopts a faux-casual tone.

“Didn’t work, did it?”, Sokka chuckles, and guffaws when the birds drown out the initial reply. Dakota grabs another mouthful of seal and grinds it down to mush between his teeth as he thinks about it.

“Nayde it did. I can uwalk through uwalls.", he muses, quietly, as he feeds the two grey balls of fluff in the nest, before continuing on. "That’s sethen. Nouw go auway.”

They are silent together for a few moments after that, and Sokka disappears after he turns his back on him to sleep. But Sokka comes back the next week with a net full of fish, and that’s how it begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am something of an amateur ventriloquist, and the slurring that Dakota/Zuko displays is pretty similar to what I sounded like when I started out. I think it's pretty clear what hes trying to say, but if anyone has any questions, hmu in the comments. Understandably, it's probably not the way that someone would talk if they were instantaneously rendered lipless, but given that people of that situation are rather hard to come by, I hope you'll suspend your disbelief.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More fluff and birdies + an ominous ending! Will be updated at midnight because Halloween and angst are things that go together, right? 
> 
> also our first swearword makes an appearance! why? idk sorry

One day, Sokka asks to be allowed to feed the birds. 

“Okay.”, Dakota says, before he thinks better of it. The birds are his, and some tiny selfish part of him wants to keep their gratitude and affection to himself. Unfortunately, Sokka is very good at forcing himself into places that he doesn’t belong, and Dakota can’t even bring himself to push him out. Instead, he grabs a mouthful of seal and grinds it to a pulp, before dropping his head to the floor and opening his maw. He sincerely doubts that any sane person would decide to stick a hand into a known man-eater’s mouth. 

Clearly, he’s overestimated Sokka’s sanity, because the boy ignores the wickedly sharp half-foot long fangs, and scoops out a bloody red mess of seal from out of one of Dakota’s molars. The birds quiet as Sokka scales the rock face to the nest, dropping bits of pulverized seal down the throats of the baby birds. 

Dakota watches, bewildered, in some kind of shock. And then he sees a rock coming loose under Sokka’s foot, and grabs him by the collar right before he goes tumbling down the side, steadying him, before immediately lowering him to the ground. 

“You jerk!”, Sokka accuses, stabbing a finger at him. “You could have just lifted me up!”

Something inside him begins to grow so warm it burns, and Dakota reels back instinctively, bellowing. Sokka, too, scrambles backwards.

“Your chest!”, he cries, and Dakota looks down. A pulsing orange light has begun emanating from his chest, like a warm flame behind a piece of thin paper. 

“Oh.”, Dakota says, and now that he isn’t as startled, he realized that the warmth in his chest is actually fairly pleasant. “That’s new.”

Sokka’s jaw drops. “You have a glowy thing inside your chest, and all you have to say to that is ‘that’s new’?”

Dakota shrugs. “The antlers cane out of nowhere, too.” 

“But how?!”, Sokka demands, flailing around. “It’s scientifically impossible!”

Dakota wiggles his bone fingers pointedly. There are no joints, only lengths of bone floating in positions that vaguely mimic human fingers. 

“Touche, Spirit Man.”, Sokka concedes. 

Sokka is the one who figures out what the antlers are really for, three visits later. 

Dakota had fallen asleep, overtired from waking up regularly throughout the night to the hungry squawks of the chicks . So Sokka decides to put the bird nest in Dakota’s antlers as a joke, chuckling to himself before slipping out. 

The fledglings spend the week tumbling from antler to antler while Dakota tries uselessly to get the nest down. When Sokka comes to visit the next week, he falls over laughing, but agrees to take the nest out. By that point, though, the birds have learnt how to fly, and they abandon the nest in favor of perching on Dakota’s antlers. Sokka says it’s adorable, and Dakota growls at him to get them off. Sokka refuses, and Dakota playfully chases him out of his cave. 

It turns out that a shake of Dakota’s head is more than enough to dislodge the young birds, but they come right back and settle in Dakota’s empty eye sockets, chirping noisily. Dakota gives up and lumbers down to the beach to try and hunt. 

Dakota can’t exactly swim, and is more than capable of drowning, so fishing is generally out of the question. Instead, he uses his rat form to burrow under the snow and sneak up on rookeries of seals, and then he can explode out of the snow bank and snatch a seal, which might feed him and the birds for the rest of the day.

Dakota snaps a seal in half, spraying the snow in glistening red blood. He swallows the lower half, contentedly, before dragging the rest of the carcass back to the cave to store. The birds are more than happy to pick at carrion, Dakota finds out, settling down for a nap and waking to a skull picked clean and a pair of round, smug birdlets. 

They grow into beautiful brown and white nuisances, and Sokka takes a liking to them, for some reason, despite Dakota’s insistence on impressing to him that they are terrors undeserving of proper names. Unfortunately, Sotaro and Dayu stick better than Stealer One and Stealer Two. (Dakota still can’t pronounce fs or bs, otherwise it would have been Thief One and Thief Two.) 

One day, Sokka even shows up with a net full of minnows and a leather glove on his hand. 

“I’m going to train them.”, he announces.

“Good hfucking luck with that.”, Dakota snorts. He has a vague idea that falconry requires patience, and Sokka has very little of that. 

Sokka glares at him and steps towards him with a minnow in hand. He makes a clicking noise, and brings the fish close to Sotaro, who eyes it warily. Dayu catches on faster than Sotaro does, dive bombing and snatching the minnow in a blur of brown feathers. Sotaro squawks indignantly, and the second Sokka offers another minnow, Sotaro jumps onto the glove, batting Dayu away before eating the minnow with a supremely self-satisfied look on her face. Sokka nudges her back onto her perch, and walks a few paces backwards, offering up another minnow with another click of his tongue.

Sotaro and Dayu waste no time flying towards the glove, bowling Sokka over and causing him to drop the fish. Dakota chuckles as Sokka ruefully rubs his rear. He doesn’t stop, though, and by the end of the month, he’s successfully convinced Dayu to land on his glove in exchange for a minnow. Sotaro is a little bit less convinced, but soon after she sees Dayu reap the rewards of coming at the click, she jumps on the bandwagon. 

Dakota is kind of impressed. It had taken him twice as long to teach Dayu and Sotaro that a click meant food. 

When Sokka finds out, he scolds them all. “So that’s why they learned so fast! Were you ever going to tell me this, or were you just going to let them con me out of all my fish? And you!”, he says, turning to face the birds, “You were just going to sit there and make me think that we really had something special? I feel betrayed.” 

Dakota shrugs nonchalantly. “You trained thenm to sit on your glohve. All I did was teach them that there was food when I click.” 

Sotaro lands on Sokka’s glove, as if to make a point, and Sokka melts, offering her a piece of seal jerky, which she gobbles down delightedly. 

“Fine.”, Sokka says, finally, “You’re off the hook for now, but I’ll be watching.” 

Dayu lets out a tiny dejected noise and lands on Sokka’s head as Dakota shrinks into a tiny rat and pulls a face that Sokka has reliably informed him is adorable. 

Sokka groans and pets him gently. “You’re a cheater, you know that?”

And for one, golden, shining moment, everything is perfect. 

He should have known it wouldn’t last. 

  
  



	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The promised angst is here. 
> 
> I know I said midnight but shit went down last night and it was a bit late. Also none of the fun little notes that I don't know whether you enjoy reading or not, but I do enjoy posting them because human interaction!!! Anyways. Plot starts happening here. I might have to tag for slight Katara bashing but I'm not going to make her a villain so tell me what you think I should do.

The next week, Sokka doesn’t visit. 

Dakota only begins to worry once the sun begins to touch the horizon, and so he sneaks towards the village as a rat. Rats aren’t common in this part of the world, and Dakota probably ought to freeze to death, but for some reason, he doesn’t. 

He finds Sokka shouting at a blue-clad Water Tribe girl. It must be his sister, Katara. Sokka said that he’d bring her along one of these times so that they could meet, and Dakota had been looking forward to it, if only because it was obvious that Sokka loved her. 

It’s the same girl who tried to kill him. 

“I was only ever there to feed the stupid thing so it would go away and not eat us!”, he shouts, and it is enough. 

Snow whirls around him as he scampers away from the village, and it feels like the world is folding in on itself. Sokka never cared. His chest is a morass of pain, as if someone had just pushed a stake through his heart. It hurts. 

The warmth in his chest abruptly extinguishes, dims down to a sickly red glow, like embers of a flame, and it is then that he realizes what it was. He spends several days mourning its loss, laying pitifully on the floor of his cave. If the waterbender had come then, he would have gladly accepted death. 

She doesn’t, and he is left to live with the emptiness in his chest. 

He finds a new cave, hides himself on the other side of the continent, but he always ends up burrowed in the snow, watching from afar as Sokka slowly forgets about him. He watches as Sokka and his sister find the Avatar trapped in the ice. Fire Nation ships come for the Avatar, and despite the prospect of a good meal, he stays where he is and lets the Avatar handle it. 

The Avatar tries negotiation, and he knows it’s doomed. These men have no honor, and he knows this because they never do. They would be delicious. They go back on their promise, once they have the Avatar, and begin another assault on the village. 

Somebody screams, yells for Dakota to do something, and even though Sokka doesn’t like him and never really did, he still doesn’t really want Sokka to die. 

And that’s what really hurts, isn’t it? Sokka will never care about him the way Dakota did. And yet, here he is, obeying like a fucking attack dog, because he still cares and he can’t make himself stop.

Pathetic. 

He makes quick work of the ship, clicking his tongue sharply as the soldiers swarm away from the ship like ants from an anthill. Sotaro and Dayu swoop down from the sky, sinking their talons into eyeballs and slashing at any bits of exposed skin. They scream, sending huge fans of flame towards their own comrades blindly. Then he turns to the screaming masses, leisurely poking around, picking the most fragrant up, sucking at their wounds until no more blood will come, before setting their limp, pale bodies down and moving on. 

He plucks up the captain, and sniffs. The aroma is nearly as fine as the Fire Lord himself, the same quenching bloodthirst. He wasn’t expecting a delicacy like this. He picks the captain up, roars, “nMine!”, and lopes off to the side to begin nibbling at his prize. 

They surrender quickly, after that. Warriors from the village surround the survivors, warding him off with spears made of ice. 

He sinks his fangs into the captain’s leg, and warm, sweet nectar trickles into his mouth as he suckles. His stomach calms, momentarily, and the lack of pain is almost a substitute for happiness. He extracts his teeth as the blood flow slows, turns, and finds the Avatar sitting above him with a horrified expression. He scoffs, and swats the Avatar towards the village with his tail. 

The Avatar doesn’t move, and so he gallops back to his cave with the captain in hand, Sotaro and Dayu screeching raucously.

That night, he dreams. 

The Avatar comes to him in the dream, two hands raised in the universal symbol for ‘I come in peace’.

“I just wanna talk.”, the boy says, “Sokka tells me your name is Dakota?” 

He makes a vaguely affirmative noise in response. The name makes his chest ache. 

“Nice to meet you, Dakota. My name is Aang.”

Aang pauses, as if expecting a response. He flicks his talons out dismissively, and Aang continues.

“You can eat things other than people, right?”, Aang asks. “So why do you want to eat the captain?” 

“He’s delicious.”, he says, and it startles him how clear his voice is. 

Aang smiles broadly at him. “Well, I hear meat is really good, but I’ve never eaten meat. You can not eat him, right?” 

“He’s not a good person.”, he protests, “I wouldn’t be eating him if he was a good person or even a halfway-decent person.” 

“How do you know that?”, Aang frowns, “You don’t know him.” 

He suddenly has an urge to roll his eyes, even though it’s physically impossible. “He tastes like evil.” 

“Well, bad people can change, right?”, Aang says, and he shrugs. 

“Maybe. But I don’t think it’s possible for this one. He’s going to end up coming back to try and kill me.” 

“Will you bring him back if I promise as the Avatar that he won’t bother you?”, Aang offers. 

He side-eyes the kid, and something in him is screaming to not trust the Avatar. “Give me your arm.” 

“Why?”, Aang asks, though he’s already offering it. 

“I want a taste.”, he says, and cuts a shallow mark into the fleshy part of his arm, before touching it with the tip of his tongue. 

Describing Aang as inedible would hardly even begin to describe it. He tastes like bitter, rotting meat, like filth and foulness. Aang definitely would not go back on his word. Not tasting like this.

“Do you need him whole?”, he asks after a minute of trying not to throw up, because a couple of limbs would be just the thing to settle his queasy stomach. 

Aang laughs, and says that yes, he wants him whole. 

If he could pout, he would be, but the next day, he hauls the captain to the village anyways, a few chunks of flesh missing, but nothing he won’t be able to regrow. 

Sokka, his sister, and Aang are waiting for him expectantly. 

He looks at their smiling, expectant faces, and turns tail immediately. 

Maybe Sokka shouts after him, and maybe Aang tries to amplify the sound with airbending, but the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood in his ears drowns all of it out. 

He crawls back though, because he’s pathetic like that. 

“So, what in the name of Tui and La was that?”, Sokka demands, and Katara glares at him.

Aang shrugs. “I don’t know. Something about him is a little bit off, though.” 

“Well, we have better things to worry about than your little pet monster.”, Katara huffs. “Dad’s trying to make Aang leave. You need to go and knock some sense into his head.”

“He’s right, Katara,” Sokka says, after an uncomfortably long pause. “If Aang stays here, they’ll just keep coming.”

“Besides,” Aang says, trying valiantly to infuse some levity into the situation, “I still need to learn all four elements.”

Katara sets her jaw and turns on her heel. “Fine.”, she says, “Be that way. If Aang has to go, so am I!”

Aang yelps as Katara grabs his arm and resolutely marches him towards Appa. 

“Let’s go, Aang.”

“Katara!”, Sokka shouts, but Katara resolutely ignores him. “Katara, don’t be stupid!” 

Katara picks up her pace as she practically drags Aang through their village. Kya stops her, in the middle of it, runs out into the street with a bundle of clothing and dried seal jerky. Katara’s eyes soften, and she takes it. Others stream into the square, bearing what little they can spare, and the look on Sokka’s face is positively distraught. Good.

And then Sokka races towards the village, and runs into his tent. Dakota snorts and begins shuffling away. But just as Aang and Katara are about to leave, Sokka shows up, waving a stack of maps and screaming, “Wait for me!” 

He cannot cry, but he curls up into a little ball and watches the weak glow of his heart flicker sickly as he watches him leave. 

He sleeps, and fails to notice when the ice shelf breaks off and sends him out to sea. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :) 
> 
> ~vibes~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is little to no mention of the clusterfuck that is Sokka and DaZuko in this chapter. i apologize in advance, apparently im not over my six year old azulakin self.¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

“You've come to me ... with a new face.” Koh hisses, menacing, so close that Aang can feel his breath on the nape of his neck. Suddenly, his presence retracts, and Aang fights to not turn around. 

“What’s this?”, Koh comments, calmly, and then there is an angry facsimile of a terrifying red demon in Aang’s face, shouting, “SECHON!”

“Who is that?”, Aang asks, barely keeping his composure.

“SHE CHEATED ME OUT OF MY FACE!”, Koh screams, face flickering wildly. 

Aang remains silent. 

Koh settles a bit, flipping his face back to a Noh mask. “You smell of her meddling, Avatar. I ought to warn you, Sechon will always have what you need most when you need it most. But it will come at a price.” 

“And that price,” Koh whispers, breath ghosting over Aang’s forehead, “is always what you hold dearest.” 

Koh cackles, wearing the face of a kindly old woman. “Enough about me, child. How may I help you?” 

~~~~~~

Azula clutches her knees to her chest. Agni is pounding away at her skull, screaming at her to release the Avatar at once, despite the fact that this whole expedition was her idea. She ignores it. What does it matter? She’s already taken away her firebending. So. Here she is, disgraced, hunting down the Avatar. 

The cold is seeping into her bones, without the benefit of her breath of fire, but Agni will not let her die. This is a lesson she learned very early on. Giving up isn’t an option. So she keeps the Avatar in sight as she shivers. If she brings back the Avatar, the Fire Nation will triumph. Who cares what some crotchety old spirit has to say about it? 

The Avatar stirs. 

“Welcome back.”, Azula says, standing up, because it’s only polite. Then she laughs, because it’s  _ funny. _

The Avatar narrows his eyes. “It’s good to be back.”, he says, using Azula as a springboard to propel himself out of the cave. He’s still tied up, though, so he doesn’t manage to get very far.

“A commendable effort.”, Azula says, smugly, catching him by the collar and yanking him towards her. “But not enough.”

“Appa!”, the Avatar cries, as the aforementioned sky bison lands. The waterbender and the other one get off of the bison. 

There’s nothing but snow and ice as far as the eye can see, and the girl is a waterbender. There’s no chance that Azula will win in a fight, but if she can get out of sight with the Avatar, she might be able to make a run for it. 

Azula pulls the Avatar in front of herself, as a human shield. She backs away, slowly, unsheathing her short sword and pressing it under his chin. The girl starts, and Azula barks, “Don’t move!”

She takes a deep breath, surveys the battle. The Fire Nation is losing horribly. It’s obviously a diversion. Zhao is coming for the Avatar, which means she needs to get out of here. Azula makes her way towards the sky bison, keeping her back to it. 

“Fly it.” she demands, and the Avatar glares at her. 

“No.”

“Perhaps I have not been clear enough.”, Azula says, pressing the blade into his throat, hard enough that a thin, red line appears. She ignores Agni’s squawk of outrage. “Fly it.”

To his credit, the Avatar doesn’t seem fazed. It’s all a bit of a moot point, though, when Azula can feel him trembling beneath her fingers. “I said, no.”

He’s calling her bluff, and she knows that he knows now that she has to capture the Avatar, not kill him. “Why not?”, she asks, “I could kill you right now.”

“This is more important than me.”, he says, “Zhao is trying to kill the moon.”

Agni roars, enraged, and suddenly Azula gets the distinct impression that she’s held herself back up until now, and perhaps it might be best to listen for once in her life. 

**_Let go of the Avatar._ **

Azula lets go of the Avatar, and Agni flows into her, making her eyes glow with an unearthly orange-red light. Flames pour from her fingers, licking at the Avatar’s skin harmlessly, leaving only a rosy glow behind. They’re warm and golden, not blue, but Azula is too busy basking in the feeling of firebending again to care about much else.

There is a earthshaking crash and bellow from beneath, as the avatar scrambles to his friends. The moon goes red. The tide is turning against the powerless waterbenders, but then a massive, skeletal figure bursts out of a river, and begins snapping up Fire Nation soldiers left and right. Even with the antlers, it is immediately recognizable to Azula, who flinches back, but Agni is the one in control now. The beast lifts its skull, scenting the air, but ultimately ignores them as Agni flies them to the spirit oasis. 

“I am..”, Zhao is monologuing, pausing, no doubt to think of synonyms for the word moron, “a legend, now! The Fire Nation will, for generations, tell stories about the great Zhao, who darkened the moon. They will call me Zhao the Conqueror, Zhao the Moon Slayer, Zhao the Invincible!” 

What appears to be a flying rat leaps onto his head, screeching, and Zhao shrieks. “Get it off! Get it off!” 

The thing leaps off obligingly, and lands on the Avatar’s forearm. He and his friends are arranged into a vaguely threatening formation. 

“Don’t bother.”, Zhao snorts, holding up a thrashing red bag, and putting his palm underneath it. 

The threat is too much for Agni, and she roars to life. 

**_HOW DARE YOU!_ **

Zhao spares her a brief glance. “Princess Azula. Why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?”, he comments, conversationally. 

Agni’s rage courses through her veins, pure, unrestrained power. 

**_I AM NO MERE MORTAL, ZHAO! I AM AGNI, SHE WHO GIVES LIFE! WHATEVER HARM YOU CAUSE TO MY SISTER, I SHALL UNLEASH UPON YOU A HUNDRED-FOLD. LET HER GO! NOW!_ **

Zhao makes the smart decision, and releases the fish into the pond. Then, he makes a stupid decision, and tries to firebend at it. The flames pour brightly across the surface of the pond, as if it had been covered in oil, before Agni stamps them out. 

**_YOU!_ **

Flames encircle Zhao, and he screams, suddenly powerless, as they lick at his skin, leaving shiny red welts as they pass. It’s a terrible sound, pain and terror all wrapped up into one. Azula tries to distance herself from the scene before her. Instead, she turns her attention to Agni’s righteous fury, a far more pleasant experience than the dull, vague sense of sympathy for Zhao. He does deserve it, after all. 

The Avatar obviously has had enough, and steps towards them. “Stop it!”, he shouts, and Azula is surprised to feel the sentiment echoed in her own mind. She’s tired. Agni responds to the Avatar though, deferentially, as befitting a child to one’s parent. Azula barely manages a token protest. 

Then Agni departs, and Azula crumples to the ground. Maybe this time it’ll stick. 

(It never does.)


	6. Sixe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the DaZuko chronicles ;) includes murder of bad people :( and also fluffy exposition :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the ending to this thing, finally. I have like three of the chapters in between, but I wrote the ending and it made me sad. Also sorry for the delay, destielgate happened and i was busy screaming at my friend who got me to watch spn purely for the confession

It’s cold. 

His stomach cramps painfully, and there are sometimes sharp pains in his tongue, as if he routinely bit through it, but he cannot open his jaw. But all of that pales in comparison to the cold. 

It’s so cold that he can’t breathe. He can’t move. He can’t think. 

And then there is warmth. It’s coming from above, and he claws at it desperately. The ice above cracks, melted thin by the heat. 

He reaches up, and flails until his claws bite into ice, before surging out of the cold and into comparatively warmer air. 

There are bright swaths of vermillion, stark against the whiteness of the ice and snow. His stomach rumbles urgently, and he lets out a terrible bellow. Two birds swoop out of his mouth; if he were more aware, he might’ve realized that they’d been eating his tongue to survive.    
  


He doesn’t. All he knows is hunger and cold and blood. 

He devours an entire platoon, too hungry to care whether they are clothed in red or clothed in blue-- they’re mostly red, and it is enough to blot out the taste of blue. 

Once he has eaten enough, not enough to sate his hunger, but enough to think clearly, there is a five foot radius of sheer emptiness, scarlet smears where Fire Nation soldiers had stood moments before. There is a single pair of crumpled blue trousers trapped between his toes, half-dyed red with blood. The birds have landed on it, and it is only then that he realizes that there is still half a corpse inside. He scents the air, and realizes there’s another group of Fire Nation soldiers running in terror a few paces to the left. There’s another bouquet of aroma, stronger towards the right, oddly familiar, fragrant in the way that bitter things tend to be. 

He glances around and pushes the body into the river, guiltily, before loping off towards the left.

They scatter like insects towards their boats, but the moon is bright and full, and he is fast. The birds follow, and it helps settle the odd stone that has dropped in his stomach as he continues to eat ravenously. 

A man with a familiar scent runs by, slightly burnt; but this time, he does not have the wherewithal to refrain from grinding the man’s bones to a soft paste, sucking out all the juices within. He’s too far gone to savor it, just moves on to the next one that crosses his path, until the water wards him off, pulled by gnarled hands and then whipped towards him. It passes straight through him, pain flaring along its path, his forequarters going numb completely. He crashes into a snowbank with a muffled shout. It’s terrifying for the few moments that he cannot move his arms as he scrambles to his feet to run, two legged, bounding over massive ice walls and into the wildness beyond. 

The feeling comes back eventually, and he makes himself comfortable in a cave set in the side of a massive rock face, familiarizing himself with all the cracks and crevices. The birds twitter merrily, flapping about and exploring the perches and ledges in the cave. That is how he discovers a tiny tunnel leading from the back of it out onto a stone ledge, when one of them, brown speckled and older(?), flies through it, gliding out into the crisp ocean air. A massive fleet is clearly visible, each ship raised on massive ice floes as trophies.

They don’t deserve to have them, those trophies. But he is too tired to bother thinking much more on the subject, so instead he collapses into a tangle of gray and white, letting his eyes close. 

Whispers in the night wake him from his gluttony-induced sleep, and he swings his head around to see three humans whispering amongst themselves. He snarls at them. They seem oddly familiar, and one of them gasps loudly. 

“Dakota!”, the tallest one shouts, and Dakota remembers. It hurts and he doesn’t want to remember any more. 

A massive grin spreads across Sokka’s face, and he takes the opportunity to lock his arms around Dakota’s neck. Dakota rears back, lifting him several feet off the ground. Sokka just laughs. “Just like old times, huh, Dakota?” 

Dakota remembers, remembers Sokka and the birds, the quiet, stolen moments of warmth and happiness in between the crushing cold and hunger. 

And his heart jackrabbits in his chest and  _ burns _ . 

But Dakota can’t say that, doesn’t know how to say it. 

“You’re just as stuthid as ever.”, he says, instead, because Dakota is definitely angry enough to tear him apart this minute, but the painful rage he feels seems insignificant next to Sokka’s good cheer and brilliant smile. 

“Hey! I resent that!”, Sokka whines, and just like that, the tension is gone. Dakota wraps his arms around Sokka as he lowers him back to the ground, the warm feeling in his chest returning as his heart begins to pulse a brilliant orange. 

The birds chitter excitedly as Sokka offers his arm up, and swoop down from bleached bone branches to perch. “Sotaro! Dayu!”, he greets, and Dakota is pleased to note that he somehow manages to tell which is which despite the significant changes in coloration. 

Dayu lets out a reproachful twitter as she hops onto Sokka’s head, and Sokka dislodges her by shaking his head. Sotaro follows immediately after, though, hopping onto Sokka’s head with a gleeful chirp. 

“I swear, it’s like you three are all the exact same.”, Sokka says, ruefully. 

Dakota smiles, pulling at facial muscles that don’t even exist. 

“Lot has changed with you, though.”, Dakota says, quietly. “You going to tell me adout it?”

Sokka beams, like nothing is wrong, like he never said that he never cared for Dakota at all, and a pang of pain jolts through his hollowed chest, the bitterest joy he’s ever felt in his entire existence. 

“Of course!”, Sokka says, and begins a long, winding, somewhat incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness. Sokka talks about being captured by an subsequently joining the Kyoshi Warriors, an all-female band of warriors, something that Dakota finds surprisingly unsurprising, and that Princess Azula had found them on Kyoshi Island and had poisoned the village’s drinking water when she had discovered them there. It was luck, Sokka said, that Katara had felt something off before anyone had died.

They are briefly interrupted here by Aang and Katara. Said Katara glares daggers at Dakota as Aang discreetly nudges her out of the cave, but Dakota is glad for it, glad for the time alone with Sokka. 

Sokka continues on, oblivious, about how they had gone on to Omashu, and met crazy King Bumi, who had trapped them in fast-growing rock candy-- and here Sokka produces a tiny green crystal, breaking off a piece for Dakota to try. It is an odd taste to one accustomed to the thick, heavy taste of fat and the sweet tenderness of raw flesh, but not unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all. 

Sokka talks about a prison break, how Azula had shown up and stolen Katara’s necklace. They encounter another restless spirit after that, Sokka says, and maybe Aang can help him, like he helped the other spirit. Dakota shrugs and gestures for Sokka to go on. 

Katara stole a scroll, they met up with some guy named Jet, got sick, had their fortunes told, found their parents, helped build war balloons raised only with massive amounts of hot air. All of Sokka’s descriptions of these events pale in comparison to Sokka’s impassioned rant about some guy named Hanh, and the beautiful, spirit-touched Princess Yue. Dakota growls at this, but Sokka just sighs dreamily and says, “I know, Yue doesn’t deserve a scumbag like Hanh.” 

It’s so obvious Sokka is in love with Yue. 

Too bad Dakota’s heart didn’t get the memo. 


	7. i honestly don’t remember what chapter this is my planning doc says eight but this is chapter 7 and i’m too dumb to know which one to trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an azula/yue interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i’m really sorry i only just finished another chapter the next few are gonna get really heavy on the Azula/Yue interactions i didn’t mean for it to happen but i just had so many ideas also apparently this is my identity crisis support fic so my writing on it is sporadic i’m so sorry

Azula wakes to a splitting headache and a blessedly silent Agni. It’s the best she’s felt in years. Every part of her is sore, even her eyelids, but her spark, the fire in the center of her chest, is back.

The bed she is in is covered in swaths of blue cloth, and Azula remembers where she is. Water Tribe. Right. Well, it hardly matters now that she has her fire back. She could literally fly herself away from this place. 

Azula makes to get up, straining her core, but it gives out in a flash of heat. She sighs. And waits. The door opens, and a surprisingly pretty girl walks in, with long white hair. Her features are definitively Water Tribe, the kind of prominent nose and high cheekbones that would get most nobles laughed out of court. Despite all this, she makes it work, smooth flawless skin and big blue eyes. It reminds her of Ty Lee, a bit, how they had mocked her upturned nose yet simultaneously tried to force their own daughters’ noses into that pleasing shape. 

Azula wonders if people would start darkening their skin and lightening their hair if this girl ever went to court. 

The girl putters about the room, stoking the flame crackling merrily in the corner, straightening a tapestry, before setting a glass down on Azula’s lap. Azula reaches for it, but her shoulder makes an executive decision to short out halfway through the movement, and she swears croakily under her breath. It surprises Azula how little it hurts to talk. 

“Don’t do that!”, the girl orders, in the soft sort of way that people who have never in their lives been challenged do. There is no force behind the order, but it is authoritative all the same. “You will strain yourself.”

The girl helps Azula sit up, laughing quietly to herself as she does. 

“What’s so funny? Azula demands, feeling the first hints of a blush spread across her cheeks. 

“Oh, nothing,” the girl says, “It’s just that you’re every bit as determined as Sokka said.”

Determined. That is a new adjective, to Azula. Zuko had always been the determined one. Azula had always been the reed who bent to the wind. She’d tried to kill herself more times than she can easily count, and had only gone along with this ‘do the impossible task’ to satisfy the nagging voices in her head. Azula is not  _ determined _ . Azula is nothing but a weak little girl hanging onto her last threads of sanity by a fingernail, without even the strength to try and pull herself up. 

Azula laughs, throatily, and the girl winces at the sound, not unlike the sound of sandpaper scraping across an uneven surface, and forces a straw into Azula’s mouth. 

“Drink.”, she orders, again, and Azula doesn’t. If she thought that the drink were poisoned, she would have downed it in less than a minute, but if this girl had wanted her dead, she would be already. 

Azula laughs, because it is funny in a terrible, horrible sort of way, and keeps laughing that sandpaper-and gravel laugh because it grates on her ears in the best sort of ways. 

Slowly, slowly, she stops laughing as tears form in her eyes and the pain in her stomach is worse than the levity it inspires. 

The girl looks disturbed, but she offers the straw again, and this time, Azula takes it. The water is cold, and runs down her throat, crisp and clear, and then radiates outwards, dulling the pain, as if washing away the soreness. 

Azula flexes her fingers experimentally. They bend and straighten, trembling still, stiff and disobedient, but they move. Azula is gripped with the urge to try and escape, but she knows there is no way she will be able to get anywhere. 

Instead, Azula turns to the girl, wincing only very slightly at the mild protest from her neck muscles. 

“How long will it be until I can walk?”, she asks.

The girl shrugs elegantly, sending a ripple through a stream of long, white hair. “The healers say that they can have you walking properly in a month. But you should be able to get around in an hour or two.” 

Azula just smiles serenely, the first tendrils of possibilities slipping neatly into the palms of her hands. “It’s would be no hardship to spend more time with a lady like you.”, she says, and it is not technically a lie. 

The girl laughs, a carefully crafted, guiling laugh, soft and polite. It’s almost respectable. “Princess, actually.”, the girl says, “Princess Yue of the Northern Water Tribe, fiancé to Hahn of the Northern Water Tribe, at your service.”

Azula raises an eyebrow. Awfully defensive for a girl talking to another girl. Then again, Azula’s choppy impromptu haircut from sometime during her third self-destructive spiral isn’t exactly feminine. And her undeveloped chest is unlikely to raise any eyebrows. 

Yue tracks her gaze and answers the wrong question. “The Northern Water tribe keeps no prisoners. We found you in a Fire Nation military uniform. Luckily for you, the Avatar spoke for you, and the Earth Army happens to have you on record. It’s good to meet you, Anzu. Your uncle Mushi is very glad to hear that you have not died in action.”

“Thank you for telling him.”, Azula replies, racking her brain for any allies she’d have had in the Earth Kingdom bureaucracy. 

Yue smiles demurely. “It was no problem.”

She leaves, then, leaving Azula with no company other than the voice in her head and the slowly suffusing ache in her body.

_ Throwing our lot in with the Avatar, now, are we? _

**_Yes._ **

_ Suppose that means I’ll have to apologize and be contrite now for being Fire Nation.  _

There is a note of levity in Agni’s voice as she replies, a smug, self-satisfied little smirk. 

**_Yes._ **

_ For the record, the well-poison was your idea. All I was going to do was drug it so that I could grab the Avatar and get out, but no, you said to poison them all.  _

**_Well, I couldn’t exactly have you actually capture the Avatar, now could I?_ **

Azula scowls, hands curling into fists. 

_ You sent me on a wild goose chase,  _ she accuses,  _ you’re no better than father.  _

**_No_ ** , Agni corrects,  **_I simply had you make use of your time. The Avatar needed to be awakened first, and now we can get our revenge._ **

_ Go drink white jade tea. _ , Azula thinks fiercely, still angry and scowling, but there is no real heat behind it, not when the both of them are in agreement for the first time since Azula was eleven. 

Revenge. 

The door slams open, and a man steps in, clad in the heavy coats that the Water Tribesmen wear to survive the harsh cold. 

“Anzu, isn’t it?”, he greets, friendly but distant. 

Azula nods. “Yes.”, she rasps, and the man winces visibly. 

“We’ll have to see what the healers can do for your throat later.”, he mutters, mostly to himself. “Anyways, up you get. You’ll have to work for your keep.” 

Azula raises one eyebrow and has half a mind to protest, but she thinks better of it and shuts her mouth. Her anger simmers, quietly, as she silently layers herself in furs.


End file.
